Department of Biology and Biological Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden.
Wallenberg Center for Protein Research, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden.
FEMS Yeast Res. 2018 Aug 1;18(5). doi: 10.1093/femsyr/foy040.
Mitochondria are dynamic organelles of endosymbiotic origin that are essential components of eukaryal cells. They contain their own genetic machinery, have multicopy genomes and like their bacterial ancestors they consist of two membranes. However, the majority of the ancestral genome has been lost or transferred to the nuclear genome of the host, preserving only a core set of genes involved in oxidative phosphorylation. Mitochondria perform numerous biological tasks ranging from bioenergetics to production of protein co-factors, including heme and iron-sulfur clusters. Due to the importance of mitochondria in many cellular processes, mitochondrial dysfunction is implicated in a wide variety of human disorders. Much of our current knowledge on mitochondrial function and dysfunction comes from studies using Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This yeast has good fermenting capacity, rendering tolerance to mutations that inactivate oxidative phosphorylation and complete loss of mitochondrial DNA. Here, we review yeast mitochondrial metabolism and function with focus on S. cerevisiae and its contribution in understanding mitochondrial biology. We further review how systems biology studies, including mathematical modeling, has allowed gaining new insight into mitochondrial function, and argue that this approach may enable us to gain a holistic view on how mitochondrial function interacts with different cellular processes.
线粒体是具有内共生起源的动态细胞器，是真核细胞的重要组成部分。它们含有自己的遗传机制，具有多拷贝基因组，并且像它们的细菌祖先一样，由两层膜组成。然而，大部分的祖先基因组已经丢失或转移到宿主的核基因组中，只保留了一组与氧化磷酸化相关的核心基因。线粒体执行着许多生物学任务，从生物能量学到蛋白质辅因子的产生，包括血红素和铁硫簇。由于线粒体在许多细胞过程中的重要性，线粒体功能障碍与多种人类疾病有关。我们目前对线粒体功能和功能障碍的了解主要来自于使用酿酒酵母的研究。这种酵母具有良好的发酵能力，对失活氧化磷酸化和完全丧失线粒体 DNA 的突变具有耐受性。在这里，我们综述了酵母线粒体代谢和功能，重点介绍了酿酒酵母及其在理解线粒体生物学方面的贡献。我们进一步综述了系统生物学研究，包括数学建模，如何使我们对线粒体功能有了新的认识，并认为这种方法可以使我们对线粒体功能如何与不同的细胞过程相互作用有一个整体的看法。
